Email Feed

August 12, 2006

Ethics Watchdog Needed?

Scientists of the future will have to be controlled by an ethics watchdog to prevent a nightmare vision of nanotechnology becoming reality, according to a Church of Scotland expert.

Dr. Donald Bruce, the director of the Kirk's society, religion and technology project, said "it was only a matter of time" before action had to be taken.

That sounds pretty scary. And coming from a well-connected representative of the Church of Scotland, this warning probably carries some weight.

We're concerned, though, that the labeling of nanotechnology as part of a "nightmare vision" is not especially helpful. For one thing, every powerful technology brings the potential for both benefit and harm; to reject nanotech altogether and forfeit its great potential for human gain would be highly irresponsible. In addition, the fear that Dr. Bruce expresses about "artificially enhanced humans" does not involve nanotechnology alone; advanced generation nanotech may be an enabling technology for certain kinds of human enhancement, but certainly other technologies will be included, such as biotechnology, genetics, neurotechnology, cognitive sciences, robotics, and perhaps artifical intelligence. Does Dr. Bruce also regard those as "nightmare visions"?

Although such hyperbole sheds more heat than light on the issues, we would be the last to deny that nanotechnology and other emerging technologies should not be carefully monitored and their implications scrupulously analyzed. In particular, of course, we contend that molecular manufacturing will enable profound transformations in many areas, and that its potentially disruptive military, economic, social, environmental, medical, and other impacts must be thoroughly understood, anticipated, and wisely managed.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

The article highlights the critical importance of separating the very real concerns of public safety from the falacious issue raised by those who simply want to restrict our civil liberties and freedom of personal choice.

Dr. Bruce is clearly in the second catagory and should be denounced as such.

Anytime a new technology is developed that greatly increases personal liberties, there are always the jerks that come out of the woodwork (like cockroachs) that question the expansion of personal liberty for reasons having nothing to do with public safety.

If you go into the guts of the Nano2Life site, you may stumble across their "work packages". Two of those are quoted below:

----

Ethics

Research with responsibility.
New technologies like nanobiotechnology very often raise serious public concern. This concern has to be addressed and taken into account in order to prevent rejection of the technology because of violation of ethical and social standards. Scientists, especially those developing new techniques, are often not aware of possible concerns raised by application of their technology regarding public acceptance. Therefore an Ethics Board was set up from the early beginning of Nano2Life.

Objectives

Define ethics issues related to nanobiotechnology
On-project advice on ethics issues Education of N2L researchers on ethics
Raise awareness of the public about ethics issues related to nanobiotechnology

contact WP leader: Klaus-Michael WELTRING

Foresight & Strategy

Ensure long-term success.
Nano2Life recognises the potential deep impact of nanobiotech on society and environment by setting up a special monitoring Technology Foresight & Strategy group within the Business Development Board. It will manage the foresight analysis and its implementation into the network’s strategy for business development to ensure that innovations are in accordance with societal and industrial needs.

Objectives

To support the medium-term strategy of Nano2Life towards a European Institute of Nanobiotech (EIN) by a long-term prospective survey
To ensure an optimal positioning of Nano2Life on the international scene by benchmarking Nano2Life with other nanobiotech initiatives or networks worldwide

Contact WP leader; Françoise CHARBIT

----------

How do these differ from CRNano's perspective? I see very little difference here, personally.

Perhaps you, CRN, might wish to contact the above leaders and ask for clarification/comment on Dr Bruce's quotation in the Scotsman?

John, as far as I can see, N2L is focused on biotech. An initial reading of their site looked good to me, but I think we're moving along parallel tracks--in the sense that they'll never cross. In other words, I don't think there are many, if any, projects that we could work on jointly.